Read A F*cking Book Club #3: We’re Reading Bastard Out Of Carolina!

Hello internet friends! Were you sad without a book to read for Autostraddle Book Club? Or did you instead experience an emotion approaching ‘happiness’ or ‘contentment’ because you weren’t reading a book where the protagonist was undergoing major life problems coupled with substance and/or other kinds of abuse? Well, either way, that time is over now. I know it’s been like forever or whatever, so here are the last two, in case you’ve forgotten what the deal is:

We’re going to read Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, which is kind of lesbian (and, like, actual contemporary literary) canon but which is also the first book in this series that I haven’t already read. So I’m right there with you guys! Laughing, crying, forgetting which page I left off on and accidentally reading over the same heartbreaking scene that made me have to put the book down temporarily last time! Oh I’m excited already. Important fact to note: continuing with an unintentional theme, this book deals in part with child abuse/sexual assault/rape, and if reading about those things is hurtful to you, please do not read this book.

If you feel like you can read about those things and be ok, then please do read this book, because I have read Two or Three Things I Know For Sureand I can tell you that Dorothy Allison is not fucking around. She is incredibly talented and pitiless; she tells her truth with precision and brutal honesty and also a kindness for herself and you, the reader, that is hard to forget. Here is one of my favorite passages from Two or Three Things:

They would come at me, those girls who were not really girls anymore. Grown up, wounded, hurt and terrible. Pained and desperate. Mean and angry. Hungry and unable to say just what they needed. Scared, aching, they came into my bed like I could fix it. And every time I would try. I would do anything a woman wanted as long as she didn’t want too much of me. As long as I could hide behind her need, I could make her believe anything. I would tell her stories. I would bury her in them. I have buried more women than I am willing to admit. I have told more lies than I can stand.

I never thought about what I needed, how hurt and desperate I was, how mean and angry and dangerous. When I finally saw it, the grief I had been hiding even from myself, the world seemed to stop while I looked. For a year, then another, I kept myself safe, away from anyone, any feeling that might prompt that rage, that screaming need to hurt somebody back…

Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different. Men eat themselves up believing they have to be the thing they have been made. Children go crazy. Really, even children go crazy, believing the shape of the life they must live is as small and mean and broken as they are told.

– Dorothy Allison, Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure

We are not reading that book though, we are reading a different book, we are reading Bastard Out Of Carolina because I really wanna read it finally. It’s a fairly well-known novel even for people who aren’t huge homos, and was even made into a movie which I feel personally has the most incongruous movie poster/VHS cover of all time. I can’t tell you that you absolutely HAVE HAVE HAVE to read it. But Laneia and Sarah can!

WHAT IS THIS, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE BARBIE?

Laneia:

She moved her brood of kids into an apartment building downtown, a second-floor frame walk-up with a shaky wide porch hanging off one side. No matter where she lived, Alma always had a porch.

I read Bastard Out of Carolina the same summer that I consumed Rubyfruit Jungle, To Kill a Mockingbird and most of Tipping the Velvet, among others. I don’t know — I was going through some feelings. The main theme of that summer was ‘Who the Fuck am I / What is This World.’ Dorothy Allison had been hyped up to some degree, so I didn’t expect to care about this Ruth Anne Boatwright, because of course I was above all hype, etc.

I read the book in one weekend. I read it on my steps in the pouring rain, chain-smoking and dying for a pimiento cheese sandwich. My accent came back. I started to remember what it had felt like to have to be mean sometimes — not because you were mean, but because the world was. I remembered not trusting anyone but your family and that isolation and vulnerability, but also strength. I mean, it was perfect, this book.

I don’t know how the south looks to people who didn’t sit on porches there all summer. I guess it can look romantic? Or even stupid? Dorothy Allison takes all of that away — the romance and the ignorance. Ruth Anne Boatwright is the furthest thing from stupid. She’s not precious or overstated either. The perfect balance of Bastard Out of Carolina is ridiculous.

Sarah:

I firmly believe that every lesbian in the world should read Bastard Out of Carolina. I would love if every human person in the world read it, but let’s get real, I met a guy last week who had never read a female author, so. In any case, if you like Autostraddle, I promise that you will love this book.

I personally connect with this book on a bunch of levels, not just in relation to sexuality. That’s certainly part of it; sexuality and “otherness” are strong undercurrents in Bastard, especially if you’re already tuned into that sort of thing. Beyond that, this is a story about family, in all it’s fucked up iterations. It’s about place (specifically the American South, but the lessons translate anywhere) and how the places we inhabit shape not only our lives but ourselves. It’s about being a strong woman and all that comes with it, the tough shit and the sisterhood alike. It’s about being an outcast. And can’t we all relate to that?

I would venture to call this book To Kill A Mockingbird for queers. It has a lot of the same soul, with a few twists. It gripped me in the same way; I picked it up and couldn’t put it down for days. This is the kind of novel you want to re-read every year, the kind you can’t get off your mind months after you’ve finished it. If you’re into gritty fiction with real substance that hits close to home, then “Bastard Out of Carolina” is required reading.

ARE YOU GOING TO BUY IT? DID YOU BUY IT YET. I JUST WANNA READ BOOKS WITH YOU GUYS.

Book club meeting will be on, oh, May 16th. Just so that no one, including and perhaps especially myself, has an excuse not to have it read. Ok? Ok good. SEE YOU THEN.

Rachel is Autostraddle's Managing Editor and the editor who presides over books and news & politics coverage. Originally from Boston, MA, Rachel now lives in the Midwest. Topics dear to her heart include bisexuality, The X-Files and tacos. Her favorite Ciara video is probably "Ride," but if you're only going to watch one, she recommends "Like A Boy."

I am super-excited for another book club. I have also decided to believe that the many reservations for this one through my library system is a sign that I’m not the only broke queer lady in the city who just rushed to get a copy.

fuck YES. I love this book even though/especially because it breaks my heart every single time I read it.

“My accent came back. I started to remember what it had felt like to have to be mean sometimes — not because you were mean, but because the world was. I remembered not trusting anyone but your family and that isolation and vulnerability, but also strength.” ***THIS.

I heard Dorothy Allison speak one time in Boston, having just come out of the South and the closet, and actually started crying quietly in the audience. Not only were her words so fucking true, but her accent that reminded me of home–how much I missed it, how terrifying it can be to grow up different in a place that’s so hard and unforgiving but yet it makes you stronger, if you can survive it.

Thanks for this beautiful comment! I’ll be hearing her speak this Friday in DC. I am so looking forward to it. (Just coming out myself; feel lucky to have been having a relatively easy go of things. Relatively!)

The library in my town closed, since they spent all the dough on like, throwing people in jail for smoking a joint. And as for the library in the next town, it is only open during hours I am working, because the hours were cut, because I did not work slavishly enough to pay the taxes to fund throwing the people in jail for smoking the joint and also cover the library. Though I think there are some rogue elements of sanity lingering about the NEXT town, and the library might be open during non-slave hours, so I will borrow Bastard Out of Carolina from that library.

I’m excited. Super excited. I appreciate that there will be a southern theme, because I live here and lately feel like the South is just one huge contradiction of itself and I don’t know what to do with that feeling.

This is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read forever, but just haven’t gotten around to. Now I have a reason, so it’s on! I can’t wait!

For those of you who might be a bit strapped for cash, but want to read the book, you could check out PaperbackSwap. It’s basically what it says on the tin; people trade books. You have to pay for postage to mail your books out, BUT when you join you get two free book credits, so that’d be enough to get you this book and, like, a Michelle Tea book or something.

ALSO! I have no idea how the partner thing works, but when I buy books I’d like to support Autostraddle while I do it, but I don’t want to support Amazon. Does Powells.com have a similar program? That’s just something that I started wondering when I saw those links at the bottom of the article.

The fact that I read Bastard Out of Carolina a couple weeks ago (and just finished Trash, Dorothy Allison’s collection of short stories yesterday), and that this is now a Book Club pick, has compelled me to finally create a username! Way to go, Autostraddle!

This is one of those years for me, Laneia – a year of feelings, if you will – I’ve been tearing through Allison’s books, Rubyfruit Jungle, Tipping the Velvet, and many, many collections of lesbian coming out stories. It’s all been like fucking chicken soup for the fucking lesbian soul.

I read Bastard Out of Carolina during the year I read 58 books, and it definitely stayed with me. It still remains one of my top 3 books of all time. It is such a haunting and touching story that’s difficult to shake – even after several years. Beautifully written. Breaks your heart. The book club gives me a chance to finally reread it.

Dorothy Allison is brilliant in her exploration of class, sometimes explicitly and sometimes with great nuance. She does it with beautiful subtlety in Bastard Out of Carolina. She was the first writer who gave me language for growing up poor/working class and I will forever be grateful for that.

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